XIV and ZIV Are Huge Success Stories Two Years After Launching

It was two years ago today that VelocityShares launched their six VIX-based exchange-traded products and I’m fairly certain I was the only one who was covering that event on the day of the launch: Impressive Launch for Sextet of New Volatility ETNs from VelocityShares. Two years later, one of these products, the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short-Term ETN, (XIV), is an unqualified success in terms of assets and performance. Over the last three months, XIV has traded an average of more than 12 million shares per day, making it the second most popular VIX-based ETP, after VXX. Part of the reason for XIV’s popularity is no doubt due to performance. As the chart below shows, XIV is up more than 200% for 2012 and has been the top performer across all ETPs for the year. The amazing thing about the performance of XIV is that it was not very difficult to predict. In fact, less than o...